I visited Colorado and this is what happened. The lake and its vast silence must be humming with life under the surface. The mountains in the distance look at me as if they’re asking, “Why did it take you this long to find us?” Two dried up tree limbs spring out of the earth on either side of my full view as if its arms are welcoming me. How else can mother earth beckon its children?
I feel my face with my palms and look down at my feet to check if I’m still myself – one whole of a human being. I’m using my senses to soak in the view, but somehow my inner wisdom has awakened to experience this strange stillness. I can’t even sit still with my eyes closed to get this close to my core.
Amidst this natural setting, I feel like I can’t be anything unnatural or unpleasant. I will have to ask every thought of mine to vacate its mind’s house. If I can’t clear out my thoughts, I can never be alone, the giant trees seem to teach me.
The fact that they were here well before I arrived and they will still be standing long after I leave the earth’s lap, hits me hard. My petty thoughts of unfolded laundry, lunch box ideas and presentations that are due humiliate me.
Like Mother nature, I want to be a stoic. I will only bear witness to love, greed, hate and excesses but not be stifled by emotions created and only known to our human kind.
Travel Around The World
Between Two Worlds: An Indian American Woman’s Honest Take on Identity, Culture, and Belonging
Observations, Opinions, and Cultural Critique Cultural Essays from a Life Lived Between Worlds
Finding Peace on a Walk Across America: What a Dog, the Deep South, and a Buddhist Monk Teach Us
How Do We Find Peace? “By practicing mindfulness. Mindfulness is the medicine we all need.” This was the answer given by a Buddhist monk at the Walk for Peace event yesterday in deep south Georgia. And what a moment it was. A Pilgrimage of Peace in...
Writer-At-Large – The 2025 Indian-American Documentary – Final Part
Continued from Part I HERE JULY My son sent me pictures of the Harvard university library from his visit to Boston and I lamented to him that it's the right place for me, and then got back to my life here in ATL. After all, I had to wash all our Indian...
Writer-At-Large – The 2025 Indian-American Documentary
Not Your Average Recap The last time I did a pictorial essay of this nature was in 2014. I had then talked about bathroom selfies I had taken, although they didn't make me look like Kim Kardashian. But, more on that some other time. Earlier today, I wrote how...
A Year in Writing 2025: Art, Emotion, and the Ideas That Shaped My Inner World
- On Motherhood As a Writer-At-Large and primarily as a mother, I wrote about Kanu dappika, the longing of a mother to see her children in A Mother’s Words for the Ache of Missing Her Children. I beamed in joy when they literally and metaphorically were touching grass...
Lessons in Effortless Living from the Nile: How Flow, Impermanence, and Surrender Shape a Meaningful Life
Certain experiences sharpen our sense of being alive, like revisiting our day while journaling at night, the fleeting jolt when a stranger’s gaze catches yours across the room, or wandering cobblestone streets in a new city. The Nile, too, is such an...
Scandinavian Crime Fiction That Excels In The Art of Being Moody and Riveting
- I work with a lot of Danes, and I find them quietly fascinating. They're humble, economical with words and rarely interrupt in meetings. Even if they are the subject matter experts, they don't find the excessive need to show off their merits like some of us...
Homesick for the Stars
When I stumble into landscapes like these, I can't help but laugh at the audacity of man — thinking we can tame this beastly beauty of nature and dare to call it "mine." Let everything happen to you: Beauty and terror. So I do. I stand still in trembling reverence at...
How I Travel to My Village Poranki Anytime Without a Passport
Poranki, my small hometown a few kilometers from the center of Vijayawada, is a place where your morning walk will take you through banyan groves, tall college buildings, and cow-dung-filled roads. I travel there as much as I can, but when I cannot, I just have...
Inside The Moth Atlanta: A Night of Stories About Belonging, Bravery, and Being Human
At the Moth spoken word storytelling event yesterday, the stage was literally set. But, I was never meant to be there. Who pays $80 and drives to downtown Atlanta on a weeknight to listen to five ten-minute stories? I had told myself. But then came a last-minute nudge...
Help! Bengaluru’s Living Rent-Free in My Heart: A Love Letter to Chaos, Contrast, and Everything In Between
- After stepping back onto the plane from a work trip to Bengaluru, I was sure this essay would write itself. As the plane climbed out of Kempegowda, I looked through the window to say goodbye to the city that shimmered like a galaxy on land. I felt captivated...
At Atlanta’s Bobby Dodd Stadium, The Line Between Faith And Football Is Blurred
I just walked out of a Georgia Tech vs. University of Pittsburgh football game at half time. And it was not looking good for our Yellow Jackets, let me tell ya. Yup, by the time I finished writing this, my son has told me, we've lost. When our 21 year old got us...
Mother Nature is teaching something through it’s silence.